A few days ago I was at a lecture at my company about .NET. It's not part of my work, but since I got interested after a collegue told me that it can be seen as the Microsoft equivalent of J2EE, which I'm currently trying to learn.
Some quotes I remember:
Quote:
"Visual C++.NET has just very little to do with C++, it was better not to call it C++."
Quote:
"Microsoft technicians didn't want C#. At a presentation of C# a Microsoft technician showed how, by just changing some keywords and notations, a C# program can be compiled by the Java compiler. It were the marketeers who wanted C#."
Quote:
"From a technical point of view, the .NET technology doesn't differ very much from J2EE. In terms of capabilities, they are equal."
Quote:
"Microsoft does not guarantee that later versions of the Visual Studio .NET compilers will be compatible with current versions."
Quote:
"The only point at which .NET is better than J2EE is it's tooling."
So from a technical point of view, both .NET and J2EE are very capable technologies and almost equal at that point.
I was wondering why company would use .NET instead of J2EE? A lot of companies already use Microsoft technologies, so I can imagine they will choose .NET instead of J2EE. But I guess there must be more reasons. Or will .NET not be the success which Microsoft marketing department says it will be in future?